Gold sees biggest annual loss in 3 decades

Nick Hungerford, chief executive and founder of investment management company Nutmeg, expects gold to continue its downward trend in 2014.

Gold's loss of luster in 2013 solidified Tuesday as the precious metal settled 28 percent lower for the year at $1,202.30 an ounce, its worst annual fall since 1981, after investors spent 2013 moving their money into equities.

And 2014 is not shaping up to be a landmark year for the metal, according to market watchers.

"We think next year gold could hit $1,000 an ounce, and that will just be a continuation of a trend which is forced and forced and forced by more people wanting to get back into equities and out of commodities."

The price of gold has fallen by 28 percent since beginning the year, when it went for $1,697.70 per ounce. Prices are sharply lower than all-time highs above $1,900 in 2011, when a worsening debt crisis in Europe sparked buying of safe haven assets. Gold enjoyed gains of nearly 30 percent in 2007, 2009 and 2010. In the 10 years up until last December, gold has nearly quintupled, with the help of low interest rates, extra liquidity from the U.S. Federal Reserve, and concerns over the global economy.

The metal has traditionally had an inverse relationship to interest rates, with demand for the precious metal increasing when rates are low, as they currently are, and is often seen as a hedge against inflation.

December 2012 was seen as a key turning point for gold prices with the commodity losing its close correlation to Fed policy announcements. On Dec. 12 last year, the Fed announced that it would buy $45 billion in additional Treasurys every month, on top of the $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities it already purchases, taking the total size of its quantitative easing program to $85 billion a month.

While previous quantitative easing announcements had had a positive effect on the price of gold, the precious metal actually posted a surprise fall of 1 percent on the day of the announcement.

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The sell-off continued in April 2013. Gold saw a sharp drop on concerns that struggling euro zone country Cyprus would have to sell excess reserves of the precious metal to raise about $522 million to help finance that country's $13 billion international bailout.

Bullion took another hit, falling to a six-month low, on Dec. 20 after the Fed's decision to scale back its bond-buying stimulus prompted another sell-off. A drop in exchange-traded fund holdings showed investors had increasingly lost faith in bullion as a hedge against inflation and as an alternative investment. Many analysts see the buying of physical gold in China and India, which is still relatively strong compared to historic rates, as the only upside for the price.

Roger Nightingale, an economist at RDN Associates—who was bearish on gold throughout 2013—argues that it could fall even further.

"I think it could go to $500 quite easily before it turns up again," he said. "It has no yield, all I'm doing is buying it on the basis that somebody else would want to buy it at a higher price in the future. And once you've got a significantly long downtrend the majority of people stop thinking that somebody's going to bail them out at the higher price."